No More Pranks

Monique Polak

Orca soundings

Copyright © 2004 Monique Polak

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

National Library of Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Polak, Monique
No more pranks / Monique Polak.

(Orca soundings)
ISBN 1-55143-315-X

I. Title. II. Series.

PS8631.O43N6 2004    jC813'.6    C2004-905171-7

Summary:
Pete has to pull the most important prank of his life to bring about justice.

First published in the United States, 2004
Library of Congress Control Number: 2004112466

Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage's Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Cover design: Lynn O'Rourke
Cover photography: Eyewire

Orca Book Publishers
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Orca Book Publishers
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Printed and bound in Canada.
Printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper, 100% old growth forest free, processed chlorine free using vegetable, low VOC inks.

For my Michael with love
and gratitude
for bringing me to the whales
.

Un grand merci to Marie-Louise Gay for her generous encouragement.

This book would not have been possible without help from the staff at the Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre in Tadoussac, and especially from naturalist Robert Michaud, research director of the Groupe de recherche et d' éducation sur les mammifières marins. I'm also grateful to Alain Dumais, biologist and kayaking guide, and to Captain Mario Tremblay of le Groupe Dufour.

Special thanks to Claire Rothman and Evadne Anderson for their valuable comments on the manuscript; to Viva Singer for letting me talk about this project nonstop and agreeing to read several versions; and to Deena Sacks, Donna Haberman, Rina Singh, Max and Celine Polak for reading the manuscript.

Thanks also to Erica Lighter, Angad Singh and Daniel Haberman for giving me a kid's point of view; to Barbara Vininsky, my most loyal supporter; and to Andrew Wooldridge of Orca Books for his faith in the project and wise guidance.

Finally, thanks to my daughter Alicia for bringing home great stories.

I'm not going to think about yesterday. No, I'm going to lie here under the covers and think about last week instead. Yesterday sucked big-time, but last week, well, last week was amazing.

One thing's for sure—I'm good. I don't mean good in a goody-goody way, like that girl Elizabeth who sits in the front row in English, the one who's always volunteering
to erase the blackboard or run errands for the teacher. When I say I'm good, I mean I'm bad. Real bad.

It must've been pure badness that gave me the idea to phone the
Pillow Talk
hotline and pretend I was Mr. Quincy. That and the fact that he gave me a detention the week before for not having my shirt tucked in. You'd figure a vice-principal would have better things to do than patrol the hallways looking for dress-code violations. If you ask me, any self-respecting guy who goes around with a clear plastic ruler and measures the platforms on girls' shoes is asking for trouble.

Which is what I gave him.

When I got the idea, it was like I was possessed. Nothing could've stopped me—not even if I'd known how royally pissed off my parents would be.

Everyone at school listens to
Pillow Talk
. It's a total hoot. These perverts phone in to discuss their sexual problems. You'd think they'd be shy to talk about stuff like that on the radio, but they're not. Like
this one nutbar phoned to say he likes to prance around naked right in front of his living room window. He wanted to know if Dr. Dingle—believe it or not, that's the name of the sex therapist who hosts the show—thought there was anything wrong with that. Then there was this headcase who phoned to discuss her urge to tie her boyfriend up before they fooled around. You gotta admit, sometimes people can be pretty whacked out. It makes me wonder about regular-looking people I see in the street or at the mall. I want to ask them, Are you one of those weirdoes or what?

I was pretty surprised when Dr. Dingle picked up the phone himself. I knew it was him because I would have recognized his voice anywhere. I
have
been listening to him twice a week since seventh grade. He's got one of those low, really serious voices and he says “uh-huh” and “I see” a lot. He also makes this clucking sound when people say how lousy they feel.

Which is exactly what he did with me. Only, it wasn't really me. It was me pretending to be
Mr. Quincy. And I must have been convincing because Dr. Dingle fell for it—hook, line and sinker. “My name is Mr. Joseph Quincy,” is how I started. My voice was a bit shaky at first. Not because I was nervous or anything, but because I was trying not to laugh. But even the shakiness was good, because most of the people who phone in sound nervous, especially when they first start talking. “I'm the vice-principal of Hill Road High School and I have a terrible problem.” I even sniffled a little to make myself sound extra pathetic.

That's when Dr. Dingle clucked. “And what is the nature of that problem?” he wanted to know.

“Well,” I said—and I took a deep breath so I wouldn't crack up altogether—” I have an uncontrollable urge that involves girls' shoes. When I measure the platforms on their shoes, which is part of my job—you see, girls at Hill Road are forbidden to wear platforms more than two inches high—I'm unable to resist sniffing their shoes and feet. There's more, but it's extremely difficult for me to talk about on-air.”

“Go ahead,” Dr. Dingle prompted me, and then he made another of his clucking noises.

“Well,” I continued, “I have this, this urge—it's really extremely shameful. I have an uncontrollable urge to brush my private parts against these girls' stocking feet. Please, Dr. Dingle, help me!”

“Uh-huh, I see,” and then Dr. Dingle took a short pause, as if he needed to gather his thoughts. “Well, the first thing you need to know, Joseph, is that foot fetishes are surprisingly common and relatively harmless,” Dr. Dingle said. “But for a man in your, uh, position, it might be wise if you put someone else in charge of measuring footwear at your school. You are, shall we say—vulnerable. You don't mention a wife, Joseph, and I'm wondering whether you are married or have a girlfriend. Perhaps she might be willing to let you caress her feet. How does that sound, Joseph?”

That's when I slammed down the phone. I had to—because I was about to crack up.

My biggest mistake was taping the call.
Okay, maybe it was my second biggest. The biggest was letting Jordan borrow the tape.

Everyone was whispering when I walked into homeroom on Monday. They were asking each other if they'd heard
Pillow Talk
the night before. Even Elizabeth was giggling. Then I remembered how, earlier in the year, she'd gotten into trouble for breaking the two-inch platform rule, so maybe even Elizabeth the goody-goody had something against Mr. Quincy.

“I'll bet it was you, right?” Jordan called out when I grabbed a seat near his. The other kids turned around to watch my reaction. I could have said it wasn't me, but I guess I was proud. I know it sounds kind of weird, but I felt like an artist or something. Like it was my creation and I wanted credit for it. I never could understand those guys who write poems and sign them “Anonymous.” I mean, why go to all that trouble finding just the right words for what you're trying to say?

“Yup,” I said, “it was me.” And just for fun, I took a bow, bending over like I was on stage or something.

“Gee, am I ever sorry I missed it!” Jordan said. “We were out for dinner. But I heard all about it. ‘An uncontrollable urge to brush your private parts…' Jeez, Larkin, how do you come up with that kind of stuff?” he said, clapping me on the shoulder.

I've known Jordan forever—which in our case is since we were both born—fifteen-and-a-half years ago. Our moms met in some prenatal yoga class. Unlike me (I'm just over five feet), Jordan's real tall. It's weird how much a guy's life is affected by his height. Jordan's into basketball. I've made a name for myself by pulling pranks.

“You can always listen to the tape,” I told Jordan.

“You
taped
it?” Jordan sounded impressed.

“Uh-huh,” I said, pulling the cassette out of my back pocket.

Jordan swears he had nothing to do with Mr. Quincy finding out, though he did admit he made two copies of the tape and
lent them to some guys on the basketball team.

Mr. Quincy sure can't take a joke. When he called me into his office, his face looked like a purple balloon about to explode. “You have defamed my character. And I want you OUT OUT OUT!” I swear he said the word “out” three times. Not only am I suspended for five days, but I've actually got to switch high schools.

You can imagine how flipped out my parents are. Quincy met with them on Friday afternoon and my mom hasn't spoken to me since. Even my dad, who's usually pretty understanding when I get into trouble, is upset. “We're still reeling from all this,” he told me yesterday when he passed me on the staircase at home. “This time, Pete, you've crossed the line.”

No wonder I prefer to lie here and think of what last week was like. Before I crossed the line, that is.

My mom and dad don't argue much, but hey, they're arguing now. I can hear them all the way from the kitchen; they're making
so much noise the floor in my bedroom is vibrating. “He's going—and that's that,” my mom is saying.

Going where? What's going on?

“I've had it. He's spending the summer in Tadoussac. I want him away from those friends of his. And Daisy and Jean have offered to look after him.”

Tadoussac? They've got to be kidding. That tourist trap in the middle of nowhere?

I can hear my dad's voice now. He'll talk her out of it. At least I hope he will.

“I'm not sure it's necessary,” he says, “but if you think it's come to that…”

I can just imagine him throwing his arms up in the air.

Getting suspended is one thing. Being forced to go to another school is another. But spending a summer in Tadoussac? Now that's a life sentence.

Pierre?

That's what everyone here calls me. And it doesn't help to say my name is Pete. They just nod and say, “Okay, Pierre.” Then they point to the wet suits that need hosing down or the kayaks that have to be pushed off from the shore.

My Uncle Jean owns a kayaking company up here in Tadoussac, about five hours
northeast of Montreal. He's got quite the job. Twice a day, he takes groups of tourists out on the St. Lawrence River to watch whales. You should see his tan.

Aunt Daisy—she's my mom's kid sister and Uncle Jean's wife—says the business is tougher than it looks. “Let's put it this way,” she told me this morning at breakfast. “You don't want to be out on the river with a group of inexperienced kayakers when it's storming. If someone falls in, Jean has less than five minutes to get the person back in the kayak. The St. Lawrence might look harmless—just a body of gray-blue water—but it's colder than you'd expect. If you fall in, you lose sensation in your extremities—your hands and feet—within three minutes.”